New York Teachers and the Fight Over School Bias

Karen Feldman spent more than a quarter of a century teaching history in New York City public schools, focusing on Holocaust lessons. She always claimed to keep politics out of class and to let facts speak for themselves. Around 2015, Feldman began noticing a shift in the curriculum toward “diversity, equity and inclusion” themes. She argued that these ideas were often framed in a binary way—labeling people as either oppressor or oppressed—and that this framing started to dominate classroom discussions by the time the COVID‑19 pandemic hit in 2020. One incident that changed everything for Feldman occurred when a group of students confronted her in school, accusing her of supporting Trump and Israel. She said the confrontation felt like a mob attack because she was Jewish and her husband is Israeli. After that, Feldman left teaching and helped start an organization aimed at combating antisemitism in schools.The federal government has opened a civil‑rights investigation into the New York Department of Education, focusing on a teachers’ group called NYC Educators for Palestine. The investigation claims the group teaches children as young as six to hate Israel and encourages hostility toward Jewish students. Officials say no child should learn that being Jewish makes them guilty or violent. The teachers’ group has a public Instagram page that hides members’ faces with emojis and states it supports Palestinian liberation by “divesting from Israeli securities” and working with community partners. They have also organized teach‑ins on Martin Luther King Jr. Day that include lesson plans praising Palestinian resistance. Antisemitic incidents in New York schools have risen sharply, with the Anti‑Defamation League reporting a jump from 52 incidents in 2022 to 173 in 2023. The Department of Education has declined to comment on the probe and says the group is not officially part of the school system.